I am not good at making plants live, although I have been improving over the past few years.  So when it comes to creating flower gardens I’m hesitant.  I don’t want to buy a plant that I will likely kill (like our impatiens this year), and I don’t want to dig up a perfectly happy…

This is spotted wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata), also called striped prince’s pine, and spotted pipsissewa.  It’s a very small plant, usually only 6 inches tall when flowering.  It is an exciting little plant because its leaves are evergreen so it can be easily found through the winter.  Like many of our forest plants it enjoys acidic…

Rhdodendron is one of our most pervasive forest plants, so much so that in my mind it fades into the background landscape much like the ground around it.  I admittedly have thought so little of it that when I went to look up the scientific name I did not expect to find more than one…